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About
About Mareike Heil
Hey, I’m Mareike
I love to paint and write because both make my life more beautiful. Most of the time I paint nature – the landscapes I’m surrounded with or traveled to, flowers along the way – or use natural products like earth from my home (pigments!) to create abstract paintings.
When I write, I blog about sustainable art, creativity and the life of an artist. I looove to dive deep into a topic, research and read until my head feels too full and then scribble everything onto a page.
But I’m not the traditional kind of artist and writer. I can’t tell you that I painted and wrote since I was a child. I painted, yes, but mainly because we had to do it for school. And wrote for school, but hated it. However, my art classes were always the best, while I struggled with everything else. Then, studying helped me to notice that I love writing and that art is really special to me.
Still, I’m only in the beginning of my career and almost completely self-taught (besides some basic knowledge) in art and writing. Both don’t come easily to me, they challenge me every time, but through this I grow and both are very forgiving. So, I write and paint because it gives me peace and space.
What I do - writing and painting
History
I live in a small, rural village in Lower Saxony, Germany, close to Hameln. My home is surrounded by wooded hills, with valleys crowded with fields. There is a small river running through our village, 500 year old trees and lots of animals. Sometimes, it feels like time has stopped for a while, so you can admire the light.
2022
A lot changed this year. I officially launched my art and writing business, decided together with my friend that we won’t continue our blog about equine health, though it taught us a lot during the past years. I started to work in a media agency and realised that I hate it – the culture, the pressure, the mindset – and stopped again. So far it’s been busy, challenging and great. Now I’m a part-time writer – artist and part-time waitress in a café in a bookstore.
2017 - 2021
In Spring 2017 I started to study at the Bielefeld University and in 2021 made my Bachelor in British and American Studies (major), Literature (minor) and Art History (minor). I loved the time, coffees with a friend, being in the library, listening to clever humans, not feeling strange for once, but were I’m supposed to be.
The title of my Bachelor Thesis was “Being a Non-Mum: An Exploration of the Discourses Being Faced and the Ideologies Challenged by Women Who Are Childfree By Choice”. Writing it included a lot of pain – SO much work – and a lot of fun, as I tried to combine my knowledge about analysing discourses, writing and art. Therefore, for example, I included illustrations by the artist Lainey Molnar.
During my studies I also wrote about the presentation of women in cartoons from 1928, about the connection between the illustrations, the text and the observer / reader in “Alice Adventures in Wonderland”, about the observer in several of Jan Vermeers paintings or about zeitgeist and style in “The Great Gatsby”. I dived into Michel Foucault’s work (french philosospher) and feminist critizism.
Besides, for some creative tasks I wrote a blog post about climate change and created a cookbook from old recipes of my grandmothers.
2019 - 2022
Together with a friend, I hosted the german blog pferdeSummen about equine and equestrian health, launched a shop and learned everything that a writer needs to know about blogging. Years of ups and downs, learning a LOT and establishing a writing style that feels true to me. It went that far that for my Bachelor Thesis in university I recieved the comment: “Too journalistic in style”. Ok, got it. I made something right I guess.
2020
During this year, I attended two online courses about creative writing at the Oxford University. I learned all basics and more about how to write a novel, how to develope an idea, find the style and tone, plot it, create engaging dialoges and many more.
These courses influence some parts of my writing for blogs, and changed how I look at creativity, creating art and presenting boring topics in an interesting way.
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Subscribe to the Studio Journal Newsletter
Get first access to original paintings, studio insights, and latest blog posts. It's my studio's journal for you to read. Open and honest, stress-free and always accessible for you.
PLUS: get this booklet for free.